Inside and outside of Network: Permanent MyBook Live Folder in Finder

My Cloud OS 3 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud
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Hello WD-Community,

at first I want to apologize for my bad english, because I’m not a native Speaker.

Secondly I hope there isn’t such a Thread already, because I’m searching for a solution for a long time now.

i just upgraded from a MyBook Live to the MyCloud 4 TB and try to solve the following problem:

My iTunes Media Folder ist on the NAS, not the libary files.

So every Mac running with iTunes uses his own libary and just the path to the media data links to the NAS.

So when I’m at home and connected to the Network or rather the NAS I can play my Media Files without Problems.

If I’m e.g. at the University I’m not able to play these files. So far so good.

I know that I have 2 options to play these files on my NAS outside of my Network:

1.) Using the MYCloud Desktop App for Mac, which works really good!

2.) Mount the NAS via wd2go.com

The first option is good if you want to download a file or explore your NAS, but all my shortcuts on my Mac which link to the NAS are useless. Especially my whole iTunes Media isn’t reachable.

The second option does not work for me, because there are several JAVA Problems and even with my Windows PC I’m not able to mount the NAS. (BTW: Please fix that Problem. The results on google show me, that it’s not just an user-based-problem). But I think even if it connects, my NAS would demount if I close the browser. Furthermore there is the same “mapping Problem” with my iTunes Media.

So thats the Situation right now. But my Wish is the following:

As I’m using a 128 SSD there isn’t much Space for Media, but I have a 50 Mbit Upload Speed at Home, so the NAS could stream all of my Media without breaks to my Mac. I tested it with the desktop Application and it just worked perfect!

My goal is a permanent mounted Folder in the Finder. So when I’m at home it uses the network speed of my router (ca. 60 MB/s) and when I’m outside of my Network it will go through the internet and uses my Upload-Stream at home. Of course there would be these login-process at the “beginning” of the process, but that would be okay. This would also solve my iTunes Problem. it would be look like this: Wheather I’m at home or at my friends’ WLAN or whereever I have an Internet Connection I could just open iTunes and play the files, because the Path in in iTunes is always linked with the file on the NAS.

So in generel my NAS should work like a Dropbox Folder with the special feature, that when I’m at home i have a better speed because I’m not limited through my Internet Connection. (And of course the Dropbox Folder shouldn’t be saved at my local HDD)

Is this even possible? How can i permanently mount my NAS?

I hope I could described my Problem good enough and you guys can help me.

Fabian

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Out of the box, it is not possible to stream remotely from the NAS. When you connect through wd2go.com or the wdmycloud app, the content is served up through the WebDav protocol and you can’t stream through wd2go.com mounted shares or the app. On the local network, you are using the samba file sharing protocol (or the Apple File Protocol, slower on this NAS), and streaming is not an issue. Further, the DLNA server cannot be used outside of the local network.

You are left with the approach of downloading the content first, then playing it locally.

There are probably some Linux tweaks that could be applied to work around the DLNA server remote access, but it is beyond my competence.

Was this possible, you would then open the right ports on your router, and then use some UPnP player on the PC (VLC for example) to access the remote server.

1 Like
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Thanks for your fast anwser!

I’m not sure wheather I correctly explained:

I don’t want to use DLNA for my Streaming.

I just need a Connection to the Drive, so the files have the same path.

For Example:

Now it’s like this:
On local Network: local/NAS/song.mp3

On other Network: webdav/NAS/song.mp3

I know it’s kinda heuristic but I’m not that network-genius…

I imagine a solution like this:
on local Network AND on other network: Internet/Router/NAS/song.mp3

At the moment I am thinking if I could solve this via VPN.

I could start a VPN Connection when I want to use my Shortcuts in iTunes and this would allow me to connect to the NAS in the same way I do at local Network.

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Yes, you could try to use your router, for example, to VPN into your home network; I didn’t try that actually so I am not sure it will work, but it does make sense.